Tubing on the rapid waters of change

There is a stress chart that most counselors use to help folks understand when their life stress reaches the breaking point.

Some visitors from the church we joined alluded to this when we described to them our last three months. My wife and I both made staggering career changes. I have gone from being a pastor to a supervising psychotherapist for offenders at a maximum security prison housing death row. My wife has closed her private practice. We have closed our home in Eastern West Texas, put it on the market and moved to East Texas where we currently reside in the top story of my brother and sister-in-law's house. I feel like a vampire bat in the bellfrie of life.

Then I began a job for which I had to learn nearly everything. I had to learn prison life and lingo, managed care life and lingo, mental health management and lingo, and finally, the particular clientele that is uniquely the incarcerated mental ill and the incarcerated mentally ill wantabes.
This was begun by moving me around the south east part of Texas to all the prisons in our system.

Then my wife fell down the stairs and broke her--vertebra. Surgery followed in downtown Houston--where only a crazy person would drive--and I found myself well suited. Then came IKE and my family was introduced to hurricanes up front and personal. When folks asked when we arrived, I tell them Hurricane Ike blew us in and we decided to stay.

And then my mother decided to have knee replacement. So I am spending the weekend with her as she recuperates from that surgery.

So, when I say we are on the rapid waters of change, I am not exaggerating. In the past, my biggest problem with tubing in the rapid waters, has been that if I could find a tube big enough to hold my butt, the water was too shallow to keep it from dragging on the rocks. Such is life. Is that not a metaphor for the routine of living? What one thing does well, something else takes away.

So how does one tube safely on the rapid waters of change? For me, I think I carry an innate sense that God has always held my life and holds my life still. I saw it years ago when I would arrive at the university dorm on a late Sunday evening not remembering the last 60 miles through the deer infested roadway. I felt it when I married, when my children were born, when my father died, when we traveled around the world with our luggage in the plane behind. I felt it when J.D. moved into our lives and I feel it each day that God gives me strength to step onto the infirmary unit where the offenders mistakenly call me "Doc," and one of the Docs call me "Doc."

I also attempt a lightness of heart. One of the offenders was telling me he was having trouble dealing with all the bureaucracy of the prison. He needed help in getting into the free world. I suggested to him that if he could manage the prison stuff, he was well practiced for life in the world. Everything today takes more effort, encounters more hassle, consumes more time, places you with more disinterested employees than ten years ago. A lightness of heart keeps you laughing when others just dissolve in tears or erupt in anger.

I also remember the old woman who said her favorite verse in the Bible was "And it came to past." She went on to say that everything in her life has come and passed. That is life. This big problem today is but tomorrow's memory.

I also have learned to value those things that don't change over time. I cherish my God, I cherish my family. I cherish some enduring friendships that go back to my youth. I cherish the health I have, not the health I wished I had. I also cherish the opportunity and privilege to serve the Kingdom where ever I am placed.

To me there are no promises I won't get seriously dunked, get my butt bruised and skinned, have folks on the shore laughing at me when my feet are where my head should be, but all the while, I too am laughing. Pity the man who takes himself and life too seriously. For me, the end is determined and it is a good end.

So, what's not to like about the adventure on the rapids of life?